


march of the pumpkins

by silentwalrus



Series: a greenhouse in brooklyn [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Autumn!!!!!!, Butternut Squash Bukkake, Halloween, M/M, Traumatized Rodent Crop Propagation, Witch Bucky Barnes, aka Buttnut Squakkake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 17:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16141835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentwalrus/pseuds/silentwalrus
Summary: Halloween in Brooklyn, bog witch style.





	march of the pumpkins

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Марш Тыкв](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17450432) by [Tressa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tressa/pseuds/Tressa)



> A giant orange thank you to nendian, galwednesday, quietnight, aggressivewhenstartled and skellerbvvt for proofreading, witticism and amazing lines bogarted into here
> 
> Also they’re to blame for squakkake, so: you’re all welcome

Steve had known Bucky his whole life. But - and it was turning into a pretty significant but - he had never lived with him in the same house when the house in question had a garden. Thus, when Buck comes in from the backyard one late September morning and Steve sees two knobbly gourds and a squash bumping along the path right behind him, apparently under their own power, it’s a little bit of a shock. 

“Uh,” Steve says intelligently, coffee cup caught halfway to his mouth. He tries to dig up something better, but without a clear and direct threat to his life and country, that’s where his speechmaking gets him. 

Bucky squints at the coffee mug like he can see if Steve’s drinking Bucky’s “special roast” (which he made  _ Steve _ roast so it was technically  _ Steve’s _ special  _ roasting _ ). “What?”

Steve points with his other hand. “Oh. This always happens,” Bucky says, glancing down. 

_ “Does it?”  _ The squash are locomoting themselves by way of their vines, scuttling like three or five or two-legged spiders, leaves quivering as they bounce off Bucky’s ankle and wobble around, trying to right themselves.

“It’s an autumn thing. There’s a lot of energies around,” Bucky says, waving a hand. “Concentrated on them. They get lively.” 

_ Lively  _ is probably too mild a word for it. Over the next three days Bucky’s entourage grows, mini pumpkins and squashes and gourds barrelling around on thin and whippy but apparently very strong vines, and each of them seems absolutely frantic to be at Bucky’s side. Most plants are generally pretty happy about Bucky - sunflowers on the street turn to watch him go, and if he sits in a park or garden all the nearby flowers and bushes and grasses all start reaching for him with petals and shoots and leaves - but these gourds are on an entirely new level. They bonk insistently against the bathroom door when Buck closes it, and when he puts on any shoe that isn’t his gardening boots they go crazy, spilling themselves like marbles underfoot. 

“The watermelons didn’t do this,” Steve says, a little desperately. He nearly wiped out on a mini pumpkin three separate times today, and he’s starting to feel it’s not a coincidence that each time was when he stepped in to kiss Bucky. 

“Melons are lazy,” Bucky says, tipping an acorn squash out of his shoe. “Cucurbitaceae are a lot more active. Especially in October... move along, you.” 

That’s directed at a turban squash trying to dig its vines into his shoelaces. Bucky did something to the perimeter of the property that keeps the gourds from bouncing after him in the street, but inside the house it’s all fair game. They start turning up everywhere: rolling from behind the umbrella stand, hiding in the bathroom behind the toilet, sneaking into Bucky’s pillowcase to escape his nightly roundup of stray squash. It’s like living with a pack of round orange kittens who are also escape artist octopi with vines. Steve wakes up one morning to find that one of the athletic butternuts managed to leap up to the foot of the bed, leaving a long tendril trailing down for others to ascend, and thus Bucky’s entire side of the bed has undergone carpetbombing by miniature gourd.

But despite himself, their antics start to grow on Steve. It’s a bit of an eye-opener in the mornings, sure, especially when he goes for a pair of socks and finds a dozen tiny patty squash snoozing on his skivvies instead, but when they try to kitten-climb up Bucky’s overalls with their corkscrew vines it’s extremely cute. The butternut squash that first started following Buck has grown large and demanding, and when he’s sitting down to eat it tugs insistently at him until he gives in and lifts it into his lap. When Buck stays still for a while - settling in to write in his journal or greenhouse book or sales ledger - the miniatures all cluster around his feet and do their damnedest to crawl up into his pockets. 

As October unfolds a lot of them grow bigger and bigger, some retiring back to the pumpkin patch in order to more efficiently hoover up nutrients while others stubbornly stick around, bonking against Bucky’s hip like they don’t understand why they can’t just fit in his coverall anymore. Buck pats them absentmindedly while he’s working, though a couple of the most insistent get carried back to the patch and lectured about overactive vegetable fatigue. "You're grounded. That means you stay in the ground,” Steve hears him chastise one rowdy pumpkin as he totes it back to its more sedentary brethren. 

“They’re just like puppies,” Steve says ruefully when Bucky comes back inside. “Kinda makes you feel bad to carve them into jack’o’lanterns.”

Bucky’s head swivels around.  _ “Carve?”  _

What follows is a fifteen minute lecture on how only craven pre-civilized wretches carve pumpkins, at least when they’re active, and anyone with active pumpkins who doesn’t  _ know better  _ should call a real estate man quick because that level of stupidity on that kind of land is a fast way to get yourself eaten by leyline warp or magic sinkhole. “We won’t make jack’o’lanterns,” Steve placates, privately a little disappointed; it’s not that he wanted to  _ cut  _ them, it’s just every other house on the block has a porchful of orange grins and Steve had been looking forward to maybe making a fun one and lighting it up.

“What? No, of course they’ll be jack’o’lanterns,” Bucky says. “They certainly won’t be anything else at this point. But we’re not gonna  _ carve them.”  _

“I gotta admit, you lost me,” Steve says. 

Bucky glances at him, eyebrows going up briefly. He makes that face a lot when they run up against something Bucky knows and Steve doesn’t, which Steve finds ironic as hell given Buck’s always been the one with both the brains and the education. Then Buck beckons, jerking his head towards the back door. “C’mon. We should have a couple ready out back. I’ll show you.” 

The vegetable patch in the new yard is sizable, full of the biggest, roundest squashes and pumpkins, the ones grown too heavy to roll into trouble. As the pack of smaller gourds behind Bucky realize they’re headed for the patch they speed ahead, tumbling into the thick spread of knee-high vines like fat sparrows coming home to roost. 

“Are we picking one?” Steve asks as Bucky puts his hands on his hips, surveying the patch with a critical eye.

“Nope. Watch,” Bucky says, crouching down by the biggest pumpkin and - tickling it?

First there’s nothing, just a barely perceptible shiver of leaves. Then the pumpkin starts to vibrate. “What,” Steve says as it rattles violently, rocking side to side - and then it bursts open. No: it splits horizontally, almost like a mouth -  _ exactly  _ like a mouth, rocking back and forth with its pumpkiny grin open wide in silent laughter. 

“Just like that,” Bucky says, satisfied. 

“I… didn’t know they could do that,” Steve says weakly. The pumpkin now seems like it’s testing its new mouth, the jagged grin opening and closing easily on the stringy orange pith inside.

“Well, not all of them can,” Bucky allows, straightening up. “But when there’s a lot of ambient energy, like I said, they get more active and start taking propagation into their own hands.”

Steve tries to ignore the  _ ptoo  _ noises down by his knees as the pumpkin spits seeds from between its… lips. “It really does look like a jack’o’lantern,” he admits. The wide, triangle-toothed grin is uncannily like the ones carved by kids all down the block, only missing the eyes. 

“It’s probably how jack’o’lanterns originated,” Bucky says. “Some witch had a pumpkin patch and probably realized what a treat it’d be for kids.”

“What about the light?” Steve says, suddenly struck by the implications of the logistics of lanterns. Bucky’s  _ very  _ careful around fire, making sure Steve only lights up with direct supervision when he’s in the garden or greenhouse. He can’t imagine Buck would put a naked flame inside a gourd just for it to glow. “They… we don’t put candles in these, do we?” 

“Hah, no,” Bucky says. “Not these. When it gets dark I’ll show you.” He glances over at Steve. “Want to try?” he says. “Waking one up, I mean.” 

“They’ll do it for me?”

“Sure. Tickle ‘em under the chin.” Bucky points to a slightly smaller pumpkin a couple feet away from the new jack’o’lantern. “That one’s ready.” 

Steve squats down in front of it. It just looks like a normal pumpkin. Several leaves in the patch are waving gently, but that’s either the movement of the small anxiety gourds in there or the breeze. He reaches cautiously towards the bottom curve and gives it a tickle. 

Just like before, the pumpkin starts to vibrate and rock before bursting out in a silent cackle. Strings of pulp and a couple of seeds splat wetly against Steve’s shins. “Whoa,” he says reflexively, sitting back on his heels. 

“You hate those jeans anyway,” Bucky says preemptively. “Wanna do another one?” 

Steve glances around the rest of the patch. That  _ had  _ been pretty swell. “How about we invite Sam to try?” 

Bucky perks up. “And Randy?” 

“Yeah, everybody. Hey, you said it’s fun for kids, right? Sam’s got a lot of little cousins. They’d probably get a kick out of making pumpkins laugh.” 

“Yeah,” Bucky says, enthused. “Yeah. My, uh… my ma used to have us wake them up,” he adds, a little shyer, the way he talks about his childhood these days. “Tickle them, I mean. And we’d make cake. It was like a party. We ate until it got dark and the jacko lights came on.” 

“Yeah,” Steve says, touched. “Of course, Buck. I bet they’d love all these little guys, too.” He nudges one of the rambling squash with one toe; it bumps against him and then rolls determinedly in Bucky’s direction. “I’ll ask if they all want to come and bake pie for an afternoon,” Steve says. “That way you and Randy can mess with recipes.” 

“Yeah,” Bucky says, carefully stepping around the squash to bump his burlapped metal elbow against Steve’s. “Yeah, do that.” 

-o-

Just like Bucky said, when dusk rolls around Steve sees a gentle orange glow slowly kindle over in the pumpkin patch. Bucky passes him a beer as they sit down on the back steps, watching the light grow brighter as the last of the sun fades from the sky. The beer is really good stuff. It’s probably wrong to call it beer just because Bucky uses empty beer bottles to drink it, but Steve doesn’t know any other word for the crisp, hoppy coolness on his tongue. He doesn’t want to know what Bucky makes it out of, either. He learned his lesson with the slug vinaigrette. 

There are moths starting to flutter around the warm pumpkin light. “Is the glow just the ambient magic?” Steve muses. He didn’t grow up a mage like Bucky did; his magic is grafted on, Erskine-made, and is just no-frills fire moxie for it. Nobody really ever taught him any magic theory, nor much practice either, because fire’s all he’s got and it doesn’t take much finessing to use it.

“Definitely caused by the magic,” Bucky says. “Not much in a pumpkin that can light up without some help. The light’s a lure, though.” 

“A… lure,” Steve repeats, suddenly wary. He knows there’s plants in the greenhouse that eat flies and bugs and… other things, but - carnivorous  _ pumpkins?  _ “For what?” 

“All sorts,” Bucky says. He points. “See that?” 

Steve squints. There’s something moving down by the pumpkin patch. The garden tends to be full of all kinds of life due to Bucky believing in “naturalistic local biome conditions”, whatever that means, but pest animals and things that eat his crops generally get evicted with extreme prejudice. “Squirrel?” Steve hazards. 

“Mole,” Bucky says. “It attracts all sorts of things, though - oh, there we go,” he says, just as a wet-sounding  _ HULP  _ echoes from the garden. The orange light snaps off. 

_ “Did it just eat that mole?”  _ Steve demands, jabbing a finger at the garden. 

“No,” Bucky says, amused. “Watch.” 

Steve stands up to get a better look. He’s all set to go over there and pry open its carnivorous pumpkin jaws when there’s a loud  _ PTOO  _ and the stunned mole is spat back out, slimed and covered in sticky seeds. Its legs waggle weakly for a few seconds before it recovers, scrambling onto its feet before scuttling away into the undergrowth.

Steve looks back at Bucky, aghast. Bucky gestures with his beer. “Seed propagation,” he says. “Mole’s gonna range a lot farther and spread seeds a lot more widely than a jacko can spit.” 

Steve looks back at the pumpkin. The inviting orange glow is back, along with the happy grin. There’s a distinct tinge of satisfaction there now. “That’s… handy.”

Bucky raises his beer in a toasting gesture. “Nature.” 

-o-

The jack’o’lantern waking is, as predicted, a smash hit with the Wilson kids, and now the backyard is full of glowing nighttime grins. Steve even gets used to the gulps and squelches outside their bedroom window as some unwary possum or raccoon gets drafted into the cucurbitaean life cycle. What he didn’t expect is for the jack’o’lanterns to keep growing. 

And growing. 

“Is it just me or are they getting bigger?” Steve says, squinting out the kitchen window over his morning coffee. “I mean… a lot bigger.” 

“Just wait ‘til Halloween,” Bucky says grimly. “We’ll be up all night after them.” 

“Uh,” Steve says. 

“Energy.” Bucky waves a hand, presumably to encompass all things Autumn. “How many people are thinking about pumpkins and jackos and haunted shit and ghosts? It gets them all excited. And on Halloween is when it all comes to a head, so they all go running wild. It’s like a salmon run but with pumpkins.”

Steve contemplates this scenario a moment. “And we have to… catch them?” he says, fatalistic. 

“Just keep ‘em civil,” Bucky says. “We’re hosting the trick or treating, remember? To a jacko that big a six year old human is just another mole.” 

_ “Oh _ boy,” Steve says.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Spell](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16171952) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)
  * [Bottle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16339208) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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